"Hey buddy, hand me that wrench will you?"
A man's voice spoke out to me, his face was hazy with the glare of the sun above us, but his voice sounded vaguely familiar.
I looked down and noticed that I was sifting through a toolbox; I was doing it against my own will.
I picked out a wrench, it was massive. But, I then noticed how small my arms were. The wrench wasn't big, I was instead just tiny.
I felt the weight of the wrench as I lifted it and handed it to the man; he was working on what looked like an exposed engine of a large machine.
"Perfect, now watch and learn!" He smiled and I felt at peace.
From where I was I began to watch him use the wrench to tighten bolts on the engine. Then, once he finished, he pulled a lever and the engine roared to life-- but it immediately shuddered to a sharp stop.
"Crap! Here I was trying to show you something, heh- maybe I should've left it to that old fart instead, huh?" He laughed and I felt safe.
"Hey! What the HELL are you doing jackass!?" Another man's voice spoke, it too also sounded familiar.
An older man appeared next to the man who was working on the engine, I recognized who he was; it was Gristle a handful of years younger.
"Free, what did I tell you letting your idiot father work on OUR Dunewalker?" Gristle asked me as he smacked the back of the other man's head.
The man on the engine was my father, the haze over his face had now disappeared revealing how he looked. He had brown hair and a patchy stubble of a beard.
He had deep wrinkles at the edges of his mouth; a result of him smiling all the time.
I didn't think of anything to say to Gristle, but my mouth still opened up to speak.
"He was teaching me, Grandpa, don't be mad..." My voice sounded very young.
"Pfft, Grandpa-- OW!" The man was smacked again by Gristle. Gristle looked embarrassed over what I had called him.
"Well, if you put it that way--- Bah!" Gristle this time smacked my father's back.
"Just let me fix this up and go get your boy something to eat before we go."
"Heh, you big softie." My father mocked.
"Don't make me hit you again, Victor," Gristle warned him.
"Yeah, yeah." My father chuckled as he massaged the back of his head.
My father then walked over to me and tousled my hair, motioning me to follow as he walked past behind me.
But as he passed me, and I looked around- he was no longer there.
Instead, in his place, was a strange hunk of iron atop a pool of blood; it was his gun.
"Dad?" It was me this time speaking, not my younger self.
"Where did you go!?" I asked again, picking up the bloodied revolver on the ground; it felt heavy in my hand.
I then fell to the ground, landing on the pool of blood. I soon realized that it was my blood, as it poured from the bloody stump where my left leg used to be.
Lying on the ground, I then felt a hand touch my shoulder; it was Gristle's.
But, as I looked back up to him---
His neck was broken and his head hung at a twisted angle on his shoulder. His cold, empty eyes only stared at me as he stood there wordlessly with his mouth agape.
I tried screaming, but nothing came out.
"You're powerless, boy." A woman's voice spoke behind me.
As I looked back, everything around me shifted back to the chamber. I was no longer under the sun at the Crawler and Gristle was gone too.
It was Bayonsik, she was standing before me.
Before I could aim my revolver at her, she knocked it out of my hand with a swift kick. I watched it disappear into the darkness.
She pulled me up by the hair, we were facing each other now.
"You failed to save the Head Engineer, you failed to protect your Pilot, and now- well, you've managed to fail yourself; you're dying in the bowels of the Tombstone." From under her veil, I could see her malicious grin.
"You're wrong," I said, spitting on her uniform.
"Oh? Is that so?"
"I'm not dead, this is just a dream."
"A terrible, terrible dream."
"Then, wake up. Wake up, and prove that you're still alive. We'll meet again out there, someday, in The Mother." Bayonsik let go of my head causing me to fall face-first into the blood.
I couldn't move as I felt the blood swallow me whole. I felt it enter through my nose and mouth, I couldn't breathe as my body was engulfed in it.
I couldn't breathe.
I couldn't---
---
My face suddenly met with the desert floor.
I was sopping wet from head to toe, and I smelled like a mix of acid and cleaning chemicals.
"Are you okay?" A young girl's spoke, I turned over and looked up at where it was coming from.
It was the machine, the one that I had crawled into when I was escaping from the Basilisk. It felt jarring hearing what sounded like a human's voice come from it, but it did have a slight fizzle over it indicating that it was an artificial voice.
"Where's the Basilisk!?" I felt my heart jump remembering that, but, we were out somewhere in the desert now- both the Basilisk and the Tombstone were nowhere to be seen anymore.
"Basilisk? Ah, you mean that mutated Anolis carolinensis, I terminated it as a result of my defensive measures protecting you." The machine showed me it's hand and squeezed it in the air, emphasizing how exactly it had dealt with the Basilisk.
"Do not worry, it was a humane death." It chimed in.
"What? Um, okay..." I rubbed my head, the details of what had happened were fuzzy to me.
I then looked down at the stump that used to be my left leg.
I felt the wind get knocked out of me from the brief flash of terror that I felt remembering what had happened; I felt like I was about to have a panic attack.
"I'm detecting hightened levels of extreme stress from you, Pilot. Do you require more rejuvination fluid?" It pointed to the opened cockpit in it's chest, from it the purple liquid that I had been submersed in was leaking from it.
"No, no, please not more of that!" I begged, my lungs felt like they had run a marathon after breathing that liquid. I didn't know there was fluid that humans could breathe in, but now, I never want to see any more of it ever again.
My ears perked up hearing it call me Pilot, however.
"Why're you calling me Pilot?" I asked.
The machine, kneeling from where it was over me, stood up. It was massive, large enough to blot out the sun above and casting a shadow over me. The chamber in it's chest began to close and as it did, it spoke.
"You identified yourself as a Pilot to my failsafe system when we were in that underground space earlier."
"It triggered an override protocol, re-awakening my dormant sub-routine."
"What the heck does that mean, I work on machines that use pistons and engines, not computers." Most of what it said flew over my head.
"What it means, is that due to you being a Pilot, I can continue my mission!" It looked at it's hands.
"My sensors are indicating that it has been over 200 years since my emergency deactivation, I wonder if the others are still active?" It swiveled it's head around, looking around the desert.
"Your mission? What's your mission?" I asked.
"Why-- hm." It's cheery voice faltered as it froze in place.
"That's strange, it appears as though my memory has been corrupted." It's antenae swiveled wildly, assumably in frustration.
It squatted down, bringing it's knees together and looking down at me.
"All of my memories, everything from just before my emergency deactivation, has been forcibly altered."
"What do you mean?" I asked as I got up from the ground, hobbling on my one good leg now.
"I'm not so sure myself, but whatever it is that is corrupting my memories..."
"It's preventing me from completing the sole purpose that I've been created for; my genesis protocol."